


to the start of forever

by dizzy



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, not much else, sap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 07:39:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10329476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: The feeling of forever settles into Dan's skin on an unexpected evening, creeping warmth along his bones like something familiar he just hadn't noticed was there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to shoe for beta reading!

_"so it’s probably the fear of that person not being there mixed with sexual attraction and just… I dunno. But it’s definitely-"_

*

The feeling of forever settles into Dan's skin on an unexpected evening, creeping warmth along his bones like something familiar he just hadn't noticed was there. 

Phil is at the computer in the office. He's got his glasses on and his fringe pushed back, staring at screens of numbers. There's a notepad in front of him, longhand scribbles that Dan can't decipher the meaning of. 

Phil is at their computer. 

Running numbers for their finances. 

Their businesses. Their home. Their lives. Their life. Awareness spikes sharp in him, like the first crisp breath when he steps outside into the rain. It's a startling but welcome reminder that the world outside of his head exists. 

Love does not have to be forever, and often refuses to be. But maybe love is wanting forever, and deciding you want it enough to accept it as fact despite prior experience. 

* 

Phil notices he's there eventually, glancing behind him and then jumping. He laughs out of shocked relief, hand over his heart. "You scared me to death, Dan! What time is it?" 

"Late," Dan says, but he doesn't move. 

He's still too busy processing what's rolling around in his mind right now: permanence. A feeling of being settled he's been chasing half his life and hadn't even realized once he'd finally caught. 

"We're buying a house, aren't we?" Dan asks. He can't think of what else to say, how else to ask for what he wants to hear. 

Phil gives him a look like Dan is being especially odd right now, but he answers anyway. "That's the plan. I think. I hope?" 

Dan smiles. "Yeah." 

*

Moving is not their top priority. 

It will happen when it happens, they both tend to say. 

They're procrastinating for different reasons, and none between them a lack of want. 

Phil feels like the businesses need to be secure first. He wants the investments in place. He wants expansion. He wants the reassurance of numbers that hold their own month to month, if not grow. They don't know where the roller coaster of the last two years will have dumped them out, professionally, financially. Are the channels strong? Can the merch shop maintain? 

Phil wants to know that in fifty years they'll be just as set as they are now. Phil has always seen permanence as a concrete goal, and Dan has always known this, and he's always made like he understood completely. 

He just - didn't, though. It felt like a figment, like a fairy tale. 

But he looks at Phil with messy hair and sharp eyes and mismatched socks and lines along his mouth and he feels giddy with the sensation of having wrapped his brain around keeping this, having this, having Phil, having their life spread out in front of them. 

*

"Do you ever feel," Dan asks, staring blankly at the television screen. Phil is beside him, dribbling milk on his shirt. "Like you blinked and suddenly we're grown up? Like yesterday you were a teenager scared shitless and now you're still scared shitless but it's not of the same stuff. Like the things you thought were impossible when you were a teenager aren't scary at all?"

Phil wipes his chin and puts his bowl down. It balances precariously on the arm of the sofa but does not fall. "I guess. Yeah." 

"What scared you?" Dan asks, pausing the television. "That doesn't anymore?" 

Phil properly thinks about it, a long minute stretching into two before he answers. "A lot of things. Thinking I wouldn't know how to be an adult. That I would have to get a job that I didn't enjoy one day. Like I'd look around and everyone else would be doing something great, and I'd just be still single and living in my bedroom at my parents house. That was terrifying. I put off thinking about growing up because I felt like I didn't know how to do a lot of the things other people already knew how to do. And - being in love. With a boy. That was terrifying, the idea of letting myself - of this, having this, with someone like you. How my parents would react. What my friends would say. I still don't know how I found someone like you, to be honest, Dan." 

The sound of his own name, so hopelessly soft and tender, that way Phil says it when he really wants Dan to hear what he's saying. 

"Wow." Dan smiles. He can't stop smiling. His eyes might be wet. Maybe, just a bit. But Phil fucking him up out of nowhere isn't exactly unprecedented. He pulls it out of nowhere, reduces Dan to this. It's wonderful. "You fucking sap." 

Phil reaches out and shoves him. Dan grabs his hand and kisses it, eyes closed, then presses his cheek to Phil's knuckles. "Yeah." 

*

Afraid of being alone, and afraid of that person not being there - 

They are two separate things, to Dan. 

If he were alone he could probably find someone new. A temporary fix, someone willing to put up with his fucked up brain and all his horrible habits in exchange for what he can offer them. (A pleasant face to look at, and now - money) but he wouldn't be satisfied with anyone else just because they were satisfied with him. 

And the reality is: someone new wouldn't be Phil. 

Phil is not a placeholder for a position in constant rotation. Phil is his own place, a center of gravity that couldn't be replicated. No one else, Dan is convinced, could be this easy to love and be loved by. 

He is terrified of being alone. 

He is also terrified of Phil not being there. 

That terror has led Dan to say some awful things, lashing out caught halfway in the fantasy of misery before it even happened. But Phil sees that fear, understands and accepts it. He allows Dan to push but only so far and then he reels Dan back in, sometimes still fighting him. 

Phil does not have limitless patience but he never seems angry in the face of Dan's fear, that's reserved for different conversations. Maybe, Dan realizes, it's because Phil has that utter confidence that whatever screams inside Dan's head won't ever be true.

Because: forever.

*

He holes himself away in the office that night to finish editing a video. 

It's easy to go into a mindless mode of frames and clicks and snips and let everything around him fade. 

It's half four when he gets into bed, Phil snoring already beside him. He could sleep in his own room tonight. He often does, to avoid disturbing Phil or to avoid Phil disturbing him later. 

He wants closeness right now, a ridiculous clingy urge inside of him. He's got forever, he's already decided. They've got forever - but his capacity for want inside a single moment is undimmed by the vastness before them. His mind won't quiet for a while, contemplating things that should not feel like revelations but somehow do. 

*

Dan wakes up to a note on the pillow beside him. 

Love is not a construct, he decides. 

Love is your boyfriend going to get coffee and pastry since you stayed up late, and letting you sleep in without disruption. 

Hopefully in another fifty years Phil will still be so obliging. 

Dan turns over and goes back to sleep. 

*

_“Is it a social construct or is it something that you feel? I feel like it’s probably a combination of that ‘cause what is the feeling?”_

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it, let me know what you think! I'm alittledizzy across all social media.
> 
> [Read and reblog on tumblr.](http://slightlydizzier.tumblr.com/post/158489280069/title-to-the-start-of-forever-rating-t-word)


End file.
